Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

A selective list of online literary criticism for the nineteenth-century Victorian poet and essayist Matthew Arnold, with links to reliable biographical and introductory material and signed, peer-reviewed, and scholarly literary criticism.

Introduction & Biography

"Matthew Arnold." Includes a biography, works, timelines for Arnold's social and political context, articles on the themes in his books. The Victorian Web, Professor George Landow, ed.

"Matthew Arnold." Encyclopedia-type introduction to Arnold, his biography, themes, and techniques, with selections from his most famous poems. Poetry Foundation.

"Matthew Arnold." Brief introduction to Matthew Arnold from the Academy of American Poets.

Babbitt, Irving.
"Matthew Arnold." The once highly influential American cultural critic, Irving Babbitt, writes: "Arnold was misunderstood by his contemporaries, not because he was less modern, but because he was more modern than they, and he is still misunderstood for the same reason." The Nation 1917.

Honan, Park. A review of Matthew Arnold: A Life (McGraw Hill 1981), the major biography of Matthew Arnold. Reviewed in The London Review of Books 17 Sept. 1981 [excerpt].

Lang, Cecil Y., ed. A review of Prof. Lang's edition of The Letters of Matthew Arnold (U of Virginia P). Reviewed in The London Review of Books 20 Jan. 2000 [excerpt].

Stoddard, R.H. "Matthew Arnold as a Poet." An appreciation of Arnold's poetry, from a nineteenth-century American magazine. The North American Review 1888.

Wallace, Jennifer.
"Matthew Arnold."Literary Encyclopedia. 7 July 2001. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, Janet Todd. An introduction to Arnold, from a database that provides signed literary criticism by experts in their field, and is available to individuals for a reasonably-priced subscription.

Literary Criticism

Alexander, Edward.
"Dr. Arnold, Matthew Arnold, and the Jews." On the views of Matthew Arnold and his father, Dr. Thomas Arnold, about Victorian political efforts to grant voting rights to British Jews. Judaism 51, 2 (Spring 2002) [questia sub ser].

Ebel, Henry. "Matthew Arnold and Marcus Aurelius." On the central importance of the Stoic emperor and his times to Matthew Arnold's thought. Studies in English Literature 3, 4 (Autumn 1963) pp 555-66 [free at jstor].

O'Neill, Michael. "'The burden of ourselves': Arnold as a post-Romantic poet." O'Neill considers Arnold's poetry as a response to the major English Romantic Poets, especially Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, and contends that Arnold wavers in an unstable but poetically productive way between seeking to establish his distance from Romantic poetry and conceding its hold over his imagination. Poems examined include "The Buried Life," Empedocles on Etna, "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," "The Scholar-Gipsy," "Memorial Verses," "A Summer Night," "Dover Beach," and "To Marguerite--Continued." This may be the best article on Arnold of the year, according to The Year's Work in English Studies. Yearbook of English Studies 36, 2 (2006) pp 109-24 [free at jstor].

Victorianism

"Victorianism."The Victorian Web. Prof. George Landow, ed. Essays topics include Victorianism as a Fusion of Neoclassical and Romantic Ideas; The Complex Realities of Victorianism; Main Currents in Victorian Intellectual History; The fundamental conflicts of Victorian poetry; Density and Elaborate Interconnectedness of High and Late Victorian culture; The Difficulties of Victorian Poetry; Victorian Doubt and Victorian Architecture; Victorian taste; Victorian Design; Race in Thought and Science; Victorian Earnestness; The Seaside in the Victorian Literary Imagination; Tennyson and Victorianism; The Victorian Gentleman; Crisis of Organized Religion; Queen Victoria.

"Monuments and Dust." Eds. Michael Levenson, David Trotter, Anthony Wohl. IATH, U of Va. A project by an international group of scholars who are creating a complex visual, textual, and statistical representation of Victorian London.